Technologically Mediated Artisanal Production Tamara Kneese University of San Francisco, [email protected]

The University of San Francisco USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Media Studies College of Arts and Sciences 10-8-2014 Technologically Mediated Artisanal Production Tamara Kneese University of San Francisco, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.usfca.edu/ms Part of the Communication Technology and New Media Commons, and the Work, Economy and Organizations Commons Recommended Citation Kneese, Tamara, "Technologically Mediated Artisanal Production" (2014). Media Studies. 17. https://repository.usfca.edu/ms/17 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Media Studies by an authorized administrator of USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Technologically Mediated Artisanal Production by Tamara Kneese, Alex Rosenblat, and danah boyd Data & Society Working Paper, October 8, 2014 Prepared for: Future of Work Project supported by Open Society Foundations Brief Description As traditional mass manufacturing in the tech, textile, and auto industries has largely left the United States and relocated to the Global South, post-industrial forms of work have taken the place of this kind of labor. And yet, the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and the dire straits of formerly great Rust Belt cities like Detroit have led to a kind of nostalgia for both industrial and artisanal modes of production. Manufacturing still exists in the United States, but there is movement towards a new kind of labor process and product. For example, industries like 3D printing and maker/hacker culture, which emphasize individual creativity as well as open source technology and collaboration, have been growing steadily. In these ecosystems, programming and tinkering are the new craft skills needed to perform this kind of labor and many everyday objects, both esoteric and functional, can be printed at home rather than being produced in a factory and later purchased at a store. Meanwhile, there is also nostalgia for hands-on work in the form of artisanal production, handmade objects, and DIY culture, which eschew new technologies and return to older ways of making. In some cases, these two new production sensibilities collide, as in the case of the artisanal and handmade but also 3D printed objects for sale on websites like Etsy and Shapeways. Maker Faires, a community gathering of makers and fans, in many ways combine artisanal nostalgia with automated, desktop manufacturing or 3D printing—and their associated techno-utopian connotations. While the DIY and maker movement have made some attempts at inclusion with regard to people of different races, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations, the majority of self-identified Makers are middleclass white men. How can these practices become more accessible to a wide variety of individuals? How can makers, hackers, and DIY aesthetes appreciate particular labor processes without turning a blind eye to structural inequalities and the harms of gentrification? History of the DIY Movement While it originated in 19th century Britain, the American Arts and Crafts movement gained popularity at the turn of the 20th century. The movement formed in response to ornate Victorian culture and marked a return to simpler or more rustic styles (Boehm, Data &Society Research Institute datasociety.net Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2536613 1990). After the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, some artists and craftspeople decried the use of machines in the making process. Rather than focusing on the industrial mass production of goods, Arts and Crafts proponents attempted to return to handicraft designs. Those involved in the movement produced new architectural styles, ceramics, and Mission Style furniture, in addition to other artisanal objects. Unlike the British model of Arts and Crafts, however, the American movement also mass produced these artisanally designed products and made them affordable to the middle class (Boehm, 1990). The Arts and Crafts movement was popular enough to spawn magazines devoted to it, such as The Craftsman and Handicraft. The Arts and Crafts movement was in many ways an aesthetic one, but there were also individuals who clamored for a more political orientation: “The movement was concerned with promoting good taste and self-fulfillment through the creation and the appreciation of beautiful objects; its more radical wing also sought to advance worker autonomy” (Morozov, 2014). While many people appreciated the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement, most workers did not have the time or space for artisanal production because they were confined to the mill or factory instead. Not everyone had the ability to leave a full-time job and produce handmade objects rather than buying ones earned with wages. The promise of worker autonomy afforded by the artisanal return was largely an empty one. DIY culture continued throughout the early to mid 20th century, but it was not part of popular discourse again until the countercultural 1960s, when several movements converged. Fred Turner (2008) outlines how the countercultural elements of the 1960s, combined with the birth of the personal computer, led to the birth of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. Through the purchasing of a personal computer, individuals could become “hackers,” part of underground culture. Brand advocated purchasing a woodburning stove and an Apple computer, a marriage of the rustic and the technological: “The way to join the holy disorder of hackerdom was by, say, playing Tetris—and, on weekends, going home and hacking rubber stamps, postcards, and whatever else one had ordered from the ‘Whole Earth Catalog’” (Morozov, 2014). In the 1960s, a new kind of entrepreneurialism and techno-utopianism comingled with a rustic, DIY ethos. This ethos lived on during the 1970s and 1980s, but it was largely the purview of punks and other underground, countercultural types (Permanent Culture Now, 2004). In the 1990s, anti-globalization efforts and the return of widespread countercultural movements combined with the dotcom boom to create an atmosphere ripe for a new DIY aesthetic. In their introduction to DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media, Matt Ratto and Megan Boler assert that contemporary DIY culture is intimately entwined with new technologies, especially social media and other communication platforms. They argue that DIY citizenship “can be understood as a twenty-first century amalgamation of politics, culture, arts, and technology that in turn constitutes identities rooted in diverse making practices” (2014, p. 18). While the book’s focus is on the 21st Data &Society Research Institute datasociety.net Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2536613 century, social media, and maker culture, these issues are also historically based. Many of the same tensions between consumerism and utopian forms of collectivity and citizenship surface in current debates, echoing the problems of the Arts and Crafts movement of the 199th and early 20th centuries, or the countercultural but entrepreneurial spirit of the Whole Earth Catalog in the 1960s. Today, the relationship between self-sufficiency and technology continues. While the Whole Earth Catalog faded into obscurity, it has recently been resurrected by Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly, demonstrating that the DIY aesthetic is indeed back. Rise of 3D Printing as Techno-utopianism 3D printing first emerged as a new technology in the 1990s. Since the mid 2000s, there has been growing interest in this technology, as more companies begin to offer models and 3D printers that attract attention for their ability to produce clothing, furniture, artificial limbs, organs, guns, and food.1 The basic 3D printing process works as follows: “Today, 3D Printers have evolved to make a variety of objects using a laser or extruder (the material output part of the printer, best described as a futuristic hot glue gun) that move along an X, Y and Z axis to build an object in three dimensions, layer by layer, sometimes only microns thick at a time, depending on the desired resolution of the object” (Hart, 2012). The printers have become relatively affordable, with some models starting as low as $500, and DIY kits from companies like RepRap enable enterprising individuals to build their own units (Hensley & Kneese, 2013). As Hugh Evans (2012), the vice president of T. Rowe Price Associates, speculated in Popular Science, 3D printing is a “game changer” because the falling price of printers means that “the marketplace opens up to individuals like us. It could be as soon as three years from now that people will have a 3D printer at home to make toys, napkin holders, curtain rings, and whatever is needed.” From the onset, 3D printing has been associated with techno-utopianism because of its relationship to the open source movement, its inherently DIY sensibilities, and its supposed potential to solve a number of pressing social and biological problems. Chris Anderson, the former editor-in-chief of Wired, recently published a book on the “maker movement,” a particular branch of DIY culture closely tied to MakerBot and other 3D printing companies that use open source software. In Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, Anderson

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